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Bill Pigford marched with Dr. King and treated wounded
soldiers in Vietnam. He’s worried about today’s threats to
all he’s helped fight for.

Bill Pigford, a Unit Specialist at
Prince George’s Hospital Center in
Cheverly, MD, says he has no time for
people who did not bother to vote in
the 2016 election.

“If you didn’t vote,” he tells
people, “You actually did vote for the
person who is in office.”

Pigford, 74, was born, it could
be said, into the role of passionate
leadership. As a young man, he was
active in the civil rights movement as
a member of the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), helping provide
shelter, food and transportation to
young people who came to the South
to press for change. Pigford also took
part in sit-ins and protests. He was
in his early twenties when civil rights
activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew
Goodman, and James Chaney were
abducted and murdered by white
supremacists for their work registering
Black voters in Mississippi. The
murders sparked national outrage and
Pigford’s mother warned her young
son away from his work with CORE.

“You need to stop what you’re
doing, because people are going to kill
you,” she pleaded.

He refused. “If I have to go on
living like we have been then I’m already
dead,” he reasoned. Pigford was
among those arrested at lunch counter
sit in at Laurel’s Pinehurst Hotel in
Laurel, Miss.

“I just wanted to order some
coffee and some pie,” he says.

For his request Pigford was
locked up for 30 days in the Laurel
County Jail.

“In that time, I was never charged
with any crime and never had a day
in court. I spent my 21st birthday in
jail,” he notes sardonically.

It took a visit from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations to free him.
“I was removed by FBI agents
because an informant told them I was
going to be killed that night,” he says
matter-of-factly.

Pigford went on to help organize
buses for Mississippi for the 1963
March on Washington, where Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his
famous “I Have A Dream” speech. He
then became a combat medic in the
Vietnam War. He carried on his civil
rights work in the U.S. Army, becoming
an equal opportunities and race
relations non-commissioned officer.

Pigford retired from the army in 1996
as a Master Sargent.

For the last 20 years he’s worked
at Prince George’s Hospital. His
dedication to his role as a delegate stems from his core values of justice
and equality.

“Every man and every woman should
be able to feed their families,” believes
Pigford, “and working together in our
union is the best way we can fight to
ensure that everyone can.”

“I had prostate cancer and
the only reason I’m alive today is
because my union health insurance
meant I was able to go to the doctor
on time and receive the 41 shots of
radiation I needed.”

Yet, for all he’s been though, he’s
still alarmed at the division in today’s
society; it should raise alarms for
everyone, he says.

“Now I’m worried because everything
I have fought for all my life
can be taken away with the stroke of a
pen,” he says flatly.

Pigford counsels unity and action,
not bitterness, as the path forward.

“Man’s injustice to man has
caused such pain, I don’t want my
legacy to be about hatred. We are
living in dangerous times and we
need to vigilant,” he says “The union
is the only organization in today’s
chaotic world that is fighting to bring
back the balance of power to our
nation. People who are unionized are
like brothers and sisters. If we stand
together we will prevail.”